“How am I to help? I do not have powers like you do. I get hurt easily, and I am not able to fight!”
“That is true,” Jared said, “…, but you have the ability of precognition. You are able to guide us during the war. To hit the Bloodlust clan where it hurts the most.”
The thought of war, and to be its strategist was something Yarra could not comprehend. Heck, in all of the strategy computer games involving thinking, she sucked! She could not even beat the game at the lowest difficulty.
“But… but I don’t want to be responsible for the Bloodlust Clan’s demise,” Yarra admitted. “They did nothing to me.”
Alicia’s eyes widened in shock, and her lips narrowed into a thin line of anger. She turned to her son. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“Tell me what?” Yarra asked, looking at Avice who looked away.
“I did not want to overwhelm her mom. And it wasn’t my story to tell. It is yours,” Avice spoke softly. Alicia shook her head in mild disbelief and turned her gaze to Yarra.
Those soft, blue eyes of Alicia radiated shrewdness that was beyond logic. Yarra knew that Alicia, besides being a good leader, was a fantastic negotiator.
Avice had told her stories about how Alicia had parlayed with a group of magicians, a hundred years ago, to leave their land alone in exchange for weapons and spells of the highest values.
Only when the magicians left did they realize that the weapons and spells they had obtained were mere illusions.
That day, a Vampire had trumped the magicians at their own game. It was the day that Alicia Selleck became the leader of the ‘Keepers of the Blade.’
“It was two hundred years ago when the war between the ‘Keepers of the Blade’ and the ‘Bloodlust Clan’ broke out.
It was the first civil war between vampires, and the factions were still more or less arbitrary. During that time, our then leader, Shaila Selleck, sought the help of an Oracle.”
“A what?” Yarra’s eyes widened.
“An Oracle. A soothsayer, a Seer, there are many names for it,” Jared Selleck responded. He poured himself a generous helping of bourbon and sat next to Alicia.
His wife nodded, her brownish hair tinged in silver swaying. “The Oracle foretold everything that we needed to know about the war; where the Bloodlust Clan was going to attack, how strong their army was, their weak points, anything you can think of. The Oracle saw everything. Such was her power.”
“She predicted the outcome of the first war between the vampires,” Yarra said, finally comprehending.
“And mom thinks you are directly linked to the Oracle,” Avice piped up.
Excited, Yarra turned to Alicia. “Where is the Oracle now? Can I meet her?”
Alicia’s face darkened. “We won the war, temporarily at least, by crippling the Bloodlust Clan’s major forces with the Oracle’s help. But…”
“But?” Yarra persisted. Her excitement was apparent. If there was a familial link to the Oracle, this mysterious soothsayer might be her next of kin. She knew from a young age that she had been brought up by foster parents.
“The Bloodlust Clan was livid that the Oracle helped us to vanquish them,” Jared continued. “As revenge, they eradicated the Oracle and her kind. None were left alive.”
Yarra’s earlier excitement evaporated at Jared’s sentence. She felt sick at the pit of her stomach. It was ironic, that the Oracle could predict the outcome of the war between the vampires but could not foresee her own demise.
As the months progressed, so too did the magnitude of their relationship.
She had not told him of her vision; the most important one.
“It is a miracle that there is an Oracle still left alive in this world, Yarra. You are the last remaining member of your kind,” Alicia took Yarra’s hands in hers. “Please, we need you to end this war. The Bloodlust Clan is getting too strong for us, and only with your help can we see an end to them!”
Yarra did not know what to say. Too overwhelmed to speak, she could only nod, much to Alicia, Jared and Avice’s relief.
Chapter-6
2 Months Ago
They came for her when she was alone at home one night. She was talking to Avice on the phone, a pen nestled between the upper cleft of her right ear and head as she worked on an assignment.
“Mr. Cavaler is going to kill me if I don’t submit this report tomorrow,” Yarra said. She scratched a finger on her half-written assignment, with five hundred words still to go.
Avice’s voice was calm and soothing on the phone, like a hot afternoon’s hypnotic ambience. “It is kinda sad that you can’t get visions of your future reports. Imagine the amount of A’s you could obtain!”
Yarra laughed. “Future vision doesn’t work that way, Avice. It sorta tells me when something important is going to happen to me, or to the people I am close to.”
“Aren’t you able to control it better now?”
Yarra considered Avice’s questions. It had been a few weeks since she had been granted protection by the ‘Keepers of the Blade.’ It involved discreet vampires patrolling around her dorm room in their invisible form to ensure her protection.
Though she felt safer, her sense of privacy took a toll. Because her visions had been accidental before this, it was not dangerous. Deliberate tapping of precognition, however, left a ‘trace’ in the air. Vampires, werewolves, magicians, and other superhuman races could detect said ‘traces.’
“Remember, only use your power when you need to. Mom said that the more you are able to control it, the more it sends a stronger ‘trace’ into the air.”
Yarra remembered the training Alicia had given her. Though Alicia was not an Oracle, the principle of exerting power was still the same. It required the same amount of indefatigable accuracy and precision in one’s mental focus.
Taking a deep breath, she imagined a small paper in her mind’s eye. Words in blue ink began solidifying on the white sheen, forming half of the written assignment.
There’s where it got a little tricky. Occasionally, her visions would form by itself without any control, absent of a trajectory and an ending. That was like lighting a firecracker and waiting for it to careen into the sky before a brilliant explosion took place.
What she had to do now was purposefully guide the paper in a slow, organized manner, into its abstract completion.
Slowly but surely, extra pieces of words began forming on the paper to form the yet-to-be completed portion of her assignment. After the rest of the words were formed, a big red circle etched itself at the top of the paper with the word ‘A+’.
Yarra opened her eyes in breathless excitement. The half-finished paper was still in front of her.
“Yarra?” Avice’s voice echoed in the phone.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just tested out my vision to see the assignment I am to submit tomorrow. A+ baby!”
Avice laughed, though it was short-lived. “I want to ask you something.”
“Hmm?” Yarra responded.
She was momentarily distracted, writing down as much information as she remembered from the vision. Her grades had been slipping as it coincided with the training provided by Alicia.
Nowhere did it say that she could not utilize her abilities to secure good marks in college!
“You said that you often had visions of people you love, didn’t you?” Avice began.
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever had a vision of me and you? Or about what our lives will be in years to come?”
His question made the pen in Yarra’s hand poke through the paper. It pierced the thinness of the flimsy material. Her sentence ended prematurely as she thought of Avice’s question. Was it perhaps time to tell him the truth?
“Yeah…,” Yarra began.
She could hear Avice’s anticipation increase in his loud exhale. “Well? What will our lives be like in the future?”
Yarra was spared the need to answer him as her mind was flooded with a flurry of m
ultiple visions.
In them, she saw strangers dressed in red and black walking outside the corridor of her apartment. In another simultaneous vision, she strangers in the same red and black attire killing off the people designated to keep watch over her.
The last vision was of the front door of her home flying open to reveal a tall lady with straight, white hair. The clock on the wall in her vision showed 8.52 p.m.
She returned to reality to check her wristwatch. It was 8.50 p.m!
“Avice, I just had a vision! People in red and black, and they killed my bodyguards!”
“Fuck!” Avice exclaimed. “Fuck! Fuck! It is the Bloodlust Clan!”
“I don’t have time to explain, Avice. They will be coming into my home in two minutes!”
“Yarra, I’m coming over now,” Avice said, and the line went dead.
Yarra could not help but panic. He would take six minutes at least to reach her dorm. Then, there were her roommates to worry for too. How would she warn them? Time was not of the essence.
“Relax girl, relax. Use your powers wisely,” Yarra breathed.
She tried to concentrate her precognition to think of a possible escape, but nothing came. She could not function under great duress. In a fit of dizzying apprehension, she got out of her bed, but stopped when she heard a loud bang coming from her front door.
“They’re here,” she thought to herself.
A loud scream ensued. Yarra closed her eyes and shivered. They would have found Melanie, her innocent roommate who could not understand what these pale humans were doing, dressed strangely.
“Who are you?” Yarra heard Melanie raise her voice.
Immediately, the sound of her voice was squelched. Yarra dared for a second to peek through the narrow slit of her room door to see a white haired woman in a red dress with black lines sink her teeth into Melanie’s neck.
The poor girl had stopped struggling as the Bloodlust member sucked on her blood.
Yarra breathed out. There was only one of the Bloodlust member in the apartment right now. If she played her cards right, she could escape. But how?
The white-haired woman, satiated after drinking her fill, threw Melanie’s now dead body towards the wall.
Yarra watched as her roommate flew and crashed against the mirror on the wall. She landed with a sickening crunch, the two puncture marks on her neck still oozing blood.
Melanie was long dead even before she could have comprehended what happened to her.
Yarra suppressed a sob as the vampire moved quietly into the kitchen and then into another room. Thankfully, her other roommates had gone out for the night.
She went into her room and tried to reach for anything, a weapon, anything sharp… anything heavy to swing not if, but when, the vampire entered her room.
Vivid visions flooded her mind once more. There were many outcomes to many paths. In her mind, this was what she saw:
In one possibility, it saw her exiting the room and running into the vampire. The white-haired lady snarled at Yarra and effortlessly dispatches a roundhouse kick onto her solar plexus.
Yarra lands on the floor and the vampire kills her with a dagger straight to her heart.
In another possibility, Yarra barricaded herself in the room, but is no match for the assassin’s superhuman strength. With just two slams against the wood, the vampire barged in, and smiles evilly at Yarra.
In an attempt to protect herself, Yarra swung a baseball bat, which hits the lady on the head. Instead of damaging her in any way, the bat broke cleanly into two. The Vampire lunged at and kills Yarra.
A few more possibilities all saw Yarra dying, except one.
When she returned to reality, she knew which one she had to choose.
Just as she made up her mind, the door to her room snapped open and there stood the vampire with a satisfied leer.
“Hello, dear sweet Oracle,” she said, licking her lips. A small trail of Melanie’s blood flowed from her lips to the apex of her chin, a scarlet trickle signifying the end of an innocent life.
Yarra knew that she would not stand a chance against the vampire. She had to choose the best possible outcome to her survival, according to her visions.
So she jumped out the twelfth floor of the apartment window.
Before she plunged into the darkness, her eyes managed a quick glance at the white-haired Bloodlust Clan Vampire, who seemed equally surprised with Yarra’s decision.
She was then greeted by a free fall straight to the ground. She was not so sure if her vision would come true.
Sometimes, it didn’t. In her mind, she had earlier seen a finished assignment submitted for Mr. Cavaler, but that would not happen now. There was no need to worry about the assignment.
In the darkness, she could not distinguish the dark concrete ground which would serve as her tombstone, or black sky sparsely speckled with white, glimmering stars.
Only the psychedelic glow of the orange pavement lights served as an illumination, becoming bigger as she approached the ground at breakneck speed.
‘I am going to die,’ she said, though not out of panic. For a strange moment, she felt an eerie calmness. ‘The Oracle lineage will die with me.’
And it was just a ten or so feet from the cold, hard ground that she felt warm, familiar hands wrap around her body.
The plummeting feeling sinking in her stomach gradually stopped, as her descent towards the ground slowed considerably. Her body, earlier weightless, was now pressed against the strong arms and chest of someone. His smell was enough to drive her worries away.
“Caught you in the nick of time,” a warm breath of air rushed into her ears, whispering words of comfort.
Yarra cried out tears of relief. Avice had rescued her.
Chapter-7
One Month Ago
The attack by the Bloodlust Clan and her narrow escape had left Yarra reeling for weeks. Melanie’s death served as a reminder as to how the enemy vampires viewed the preciousness of a human life.
“They look at you as blood bags, that’s all,” Alicia Selleck said, when Avice brought her home.
Yarra nodded. If she were to remain alive, and to keep such undesirable forces at bay, she would have to help the Keepers of the Blade.
As the weeks after the first attack progressed, so did her capabilities. She could summon visions now, though it left her exhausted.
Alicia squeezed the spongy receptacles of her mind for future visions until Yarra could do no more. In the end, Avice had to step in to stop his mother from driving her into irreversible fatigue.
“She is helping us get a lot of intel,” Alicia said in a huff.
“Even so, mom, she has to rest.”
Yarra kissed Avice appreciatively on the cheek when Alicia left the room. There was a distaste in his mother’s mouth that she did not like.
“She does not approve of us, does she?” Yarra asked.
He sighed. “I guess there is no hiding it from you. As much as mom loves that you are helping us, she is prejudiced towards your powers. She says that it must be contained. And it isn’t like her to believe in inter-power relationships.”
“A vampire must marry a vampire,” Yarra breathed. She had heard of such prejudices. It was in fact, the very reason her clans-people had died in the first place. They were deemed too powerful to survive.
“I think that is bullshit, though,” Avice said. “We should be able to choose who we want to love, and who we want to spend the rest of our lives with.”
‘Werewolves had it lucky’, Yarra thought. If they wanted to accumulate more followers, all they had to do was bite a human. Vampires had lost that ability to transmute their traits onto another person through a single bite.
Pressing her hands on his tattoo, she smiled. She traced a finger along the tip of the shaded grey of the blade on his chest. It served as a good namesake of his clan.
Protectors, warriors who believed in the sanctity of the human life.
Yarra, though
not one who wanted to contribute to war, felt that she was aiding in vanquishing an evil force, and that justified her actions.
“You don’t have to fight in this war if you don’t want to,” Avice reminded her.
“But I want to. For you,” Yarra said.
And so she did.
*
The war fought against the Bloodlust Clan proved to be a victory for the Keepers of the Blade. With Yarra’s ability to see the future, Alicia was able to maximize her limited army and choose the best possible outcomes.
Claimed by Love (A Rizer Pack Shifter Series Book 3) Page 54
